I know that He exists.

I know that He exists.

Somewhere—in silence—

He has hid his rare life

From our gross eyes.

'Tis an instant's play—

'Tis a fond Ambush—

Just to make Bliss

Earn her own surprise!

But—should the play

Prove piercing earnest—

Should the glee—glaze—

In Death's—stiff—stare—

Would not the fun

Look too expensive!

Would not the jest—

Have crawled too far!

                                                                                          F365 (1862)  338

If God hides himself from our curious eyes, perhaps there is a good reason. How many of us could survive a true encounter? Yet it is reasonable for people to want some real evidence of his (or her or its—I’m going with traditional monotheistic formulations here) existence. Dickinson tackles this issue head on. She puts the question of God’s existence front and center: “I know that He exists.” But she also believes that his “rare” (rarified) existence is hidden from our grosser and fleshly nature. This is a purposeful act: “He has hid his rare life.”

Saul's encounter with God left his
blind for days. (Caravaggio: 1600)

                  But people will do what they can to have a direct experience of God. Some try through suffering or self denial; others through mind-altering experiences or substances; still others through meditation; many more through prayer and supplication. The poet frames this as a game.  The woman who wanders in the woods seeking evidence of the Divine and imagining that an angel or God himself might manifest in front of her is hoping for a “fond Ambush.” She wants the bliss of such a surprising experience, but she wants to “earn” it.

                  God becomes party to this game. His hiding now seems playful rather than precautionary. He may well indulge in “an instant’s play,” a game of hide and seek.

                  It’s a dangerous game—at least for the human (I’m remembering Sancho Panza telling Don Quixote that whether the stone strikes the pot or the pot strikes the stone it is going to be bad for the pot). In a later Dickinson poem, “He fumbles at your Soul” [F477], God begins by just noodling around a bit with your soul as if it were a keyboard and he were just finding the right key. But after a while he “Deals One—imperial Thunderboldt / That scalps your naked soul.” Yes, a dangerous game indeed.

                  Just so in this poem. What would happen, Dickinson asks, if the seeker finds God? Bliss? No. The game could well become “piercing earnest”—and she employs the word ‘piercing’ for its suggestion of stabbing, for the nails that pierced Jesus’ hands and feet during crucifixion, for a bolt through the heart—and certainly not something as trifling as, say, the piercing of a needle through fabric. This is no longer a game. The “glee”—Dickinson ironically trivializes the emotion here rather than use a word such as “ecstasy”—can quickly glaze over into the stare of the dead.

                  But Dickinson is not blaming the God-seeker for unwise presumption. The last stanza holds something of outrage. It drips with sarcasm. She goes back to God’s hide and seek: Doesn’t that “fun / Look too expensive” now, she asks? Look what you’ve done, is the implied accusation. People really can’t survive direct contact with the almighty. This “jest”—again a word to trivialize the hiding game God plays—has “crawled too far,” she says, as if it were something slinking out of the nether world.

                  The poem reflects both unquestioning faith and existential scorn. God may be great and powerful, his nature “rare” and beyond knowing, but Dickinson doesn’t trust him.